Nine Inch Nails' New Music Video Features a Custom Build of Jeff Minter's Polybius

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Jeff Minter of Llamasoft go together like peanut butter and bananas. It's a match that at first blush, you wonder if they'll even go together. But once they coincide, it almost feels like they were destined for one another all along.

So, today in odd-ish couple news, Nine Inch Nails released a spontaneous new music video for the song "LESS THAN"—a music video that features a woman playing none other than Minter's latest game, the dazzling Polybius, which is a reimagining of a long lost urban legend.

The Polybius seen in the video though isn't the one you'll find currently on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR. It's customized to the melody of the song. Instead of silly phrases crossing the screen as in the original, lyrics from the song greet the viewer's eyes. In an interview with Minter on Ars Technica, the collaboration was a dream come true. "Of course I was a bit anxious, since when you're doing your own creative work and it needs to mesh with the work of an artist, it's not entirely a given that your work will agree with what he had in mind," Minter told Ars Technica. "I just did stuff that I felt went well with the energy of the music, and I was really pleased when Trent liked what we'd done."

The collaboration had road bumps though. Minter had to implement new code into the game as to work for the music video, such as changing the words that fly at the player in the game. Also with the game currently being a PlayStation 4 exclusive, Minter had to toss an exclusive code for the game's eventual PC version Reznor's way. Minter only had a "few days" to finish the build for the video, which luckily, wasn't too huge of an ask in relation to the new code he had to implement.

The end result is the collaborative video we see today: one showing off Polybius in all its chaotic, urban legend baiting action, with Reznor crooning over it all. In the past, Reznor's composed music for Quake and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, so this isn't the musician's first foray into video games. Too bad the new song isn't too great. Oh well, at least the video is cool?

This article may contain links to online retail stores. If you click on one and buy the product we may receive a small commission. For more information, go here.